M. Arian-Nejad

Copyright © 2002 M. Arian-Nejad. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Let R be a ring, and denote by [R,R] the group generated additively by the additive commutators of R. When Rn=Mn(R) (the ring of n×n matrices over R), it is shown that [Rn,Rn] is the kernel of the regular trace function modulo [R,R]. Then considering R as a simple left Artinian F-central algebra which is algebraic over F with Char F=0, it is shown that R can decompose over [R,R], as R=Fx+[R,R], for a fixed element x∈R. The space R/[R,R] over F is known as the Whitehead space of R. When R is a semisimple central F-algebra, the dimension of its Whitehead space reveals the number of simple components of R. More precisely, we show that when R is algebraic over F and Char F=0, then the number of simple components of R is greater than or equal to dimF  R/[R,R], and when R is finite dimensional over F or is locally finite over F in the case of Char F=0, then the number of simple components of R is equal to dimF  R/[R,R].